Measles Outbreak

Apr 14, 2025

Measles continues to spread in the U.S. at an increasingly rapid pace, to 712 cases by early April. The overwhelming majority of these cases were in unvaccinated people, including the two children who died.

An effective vaccine against measles was introduced in the U.S. in 1963, and the disease was considered to have been eliminated in this country by 2000. But with fewer people getting the vaccine, it has come back.

In the midst of the outbreak, President Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has spread mis-information about vaccines being linked to autism, which many studies have shown to be false. When a 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa killed 80 children, Kennedy falsely claimed the measles vaccine probably caused the deaths.

Kennedy responded to the current outbreak by saying: “We have measles outbreaks every year,” and called the first child’s death “not unusual.” He repeated, falsely, that the Mumps, Measles, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine causes deaths every year, even though there have been no known deaths from the MMR vaccine since its introduction in 1970!

After the death of the second child from measles this year, Kennedy reluctantly admitted that, “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,” which is true. Reported cases of measles dropped by 97% between 1965 and 1968 following the introduction of the first measles vaccine.

But last month, following Kennedy’s appointment, officials at the National Institutes of Health terminated around three dozen grants for research to study why people are hesitant to get vaccines!

While there may be risks associated with vaccines, they are much smaller than the risks of contracting diseases among those who aren’t vaccinated. In the case of measles, 97% of those who are vaccinated with two doses of the MMR vaccine will be protected from ever contracting the disease, and those who do will have a milder form.